Lakewood City School District agrees to reconsider elementary school consolidation

Welcome to the Sound of Ideas from Ideastream Public Media. I'm Stephanie Haney. Thank you for joining us. For several years now, Lakewood City Schools has been discussing a plan to consolidate its elementary school buildings, citing decreasing enrollment. The district had a plan in place to repurpose one building, but now, pursuant to a legal settlement, that plan must be considered further. Meanwhile, leaders in Lakewoods say the district has seen a decrease of roughly 2,400 students since 2003. Over the past year, consolidation discussions have become heated, with the friends of Lakewood Schools group suing the district over the way it arrived at the decision to repurpose Lincoln Elementary School and turn it into a child development center. We start the show today learning about Lakewood's plan and why some community members have pushed back. With me in studio, we have Connor Morris, our education reporter here at IdeaStream Public Media, who's been covering the story extensively. Connor, thanks for being with us. Of course. Glad to be here. We also have with us Zach Robach. He's a former member of Lakewood City School's Elementary Planning Task Force and the parent of two Liquid City School children. Zach, welcome. Thanks for having me. We do want to let you know we did invite Lakewood City Schools to be a part of this conversation. They weren't able to send a representative, but we will share a statement that they provided to us via email later in the conversation. If you want to join this discussion, you can call us at 866-578-0903. You can also email us at SOI at Ideastream.org or message us on Instagram at the Sound of Ideas. Now, Connor, as I understand it, there are four main players in this conversation. Lakewood Elementary Schools, about Lakewood Elementary Schools. Sure. The elementary schools are not actually people in the conversation, to be clear. The superintendent, the school board, an elementary planning task force, and a group called Friends of Lakewood Schools. So can you define the positions for us of these people in a couple sentences before we get started? Sure. So the superintendent, Maggie, needs Wiki, and the administration have been kind of the main drivers of this, I would say. They say we need to adjust to become more efficient. after years of enrollment losses and buildings are underutilize. Class sizes aren't even across the district. These are conversations that a lot of schools are having nowadays. But the school board then voted to approve a plan proposed by the administration last year to consolidate schools, so to go from seven elementary to six. And that also included... consolidating the preschool programs, which are currently at each individual elementary school, to the one building that would be no longer an elementary school. Then there was Friends of Lakewood Schools, which Zach is a member of, I'm sorry, no, excuse me, we got a couple different stuff. A lot of players for sure in the conversation. A friend of Lakewood schools, which is a nonprofit that was formed to raise concerns about this process that led to this. And so then there's also this Facilities Task Force, which was convened prior to that that included dozens of local residents and school board members and school district employees that they held a handful of meetings prior to this recommendation from the board. And those meetings were closed to the public.

So there were some concerns that were raised about that. And that is the group of which Zach was a member. Correct. I was a member of the task force, not friends of Lakewood School. Yeah, sorry about that, Zach. Thank you for clarifying. Now, Connor, Lakewood City School district officials voted last year to repurpose Lincoln Elementary School. That vote has been revoked due to this legal settlement. But tell us what the plan was. Sure. So again, to repurpose Lincoln Elementary, to make it into a preschool. and then essentially to kind of consolidate the rest of class sizes across the district, basically. Okay. Now, Zach, you were on Lakewood's Elementary Planning Task Force. As we said, that got disbanded in 2025. Is the plan that Connor just described there, the repurposing of Lincoln Elementary School? Is that what the task force would have recommended? I don't think that's what the task force would have recommended. Some people on the task force did support repurposing a school, but a lot of people did not, and really no consensus emerged. I think we tried to provide informed guidance to the district. One of the main benefits that I think we provided is scrutinizing the data. Connor mentioned declining enrollment, under utilization. Those were kind of topics that were introduced to the task force, and we pressure tested the data early and found that those... Once you get to better data, those trends don't really hold up. There was a new enrollment study that came out that showed stable enrollment, and when you control... building utilization for special ed when you take that out of the equation to make sure that stays protected all the buildings were actually pretty well balanced at around two-thirds utilization okay is that how you would describe then or are there additional things that you would add that you saw risks regarding that the plan that the district did vote for last year those were the two big I think data issues that we identified early on in the task force is that the two central premises of repurposing a school declining enrollment and imbalanced utilization when you dig into the numbers don't hold up and there's a lot of other risks that seem to come with repurposing a school you lose the neighborhood elementary school you destabilize a lot of families we don't at this point even know where the boundaries would be so families across the district have been in limbo for the last year unsure where they're going to be next year. And when you talk about boundaries, you're talking about if Lincoln Elementary School is no longer used as an elementary school, all of the district lines would shift. So students who weren't even necessarily enrolled at Lincoln Elementary School may have their elementary school shifted. Yeah, that's a great point. A lot of focus has been on Lincoln Elementary School, but the district's been clear that this is going to be redrawing the boundaries for everybody in the district. special ed programs will switch schools the gifted program will switch schools there's a lot of changes beyond just lincoln elementary that i think is why members of the community are upset beyond just lincoln now connor since the task force was disbanded what do we know about how the district came to its now upended decision to repurpose lincoln elementary school which again we know that decision is on pause at the moment but how did the district arrive at that position

yeah so last year this friends of lakewood schools uh nonprofit that was formed to to kind of express concerns about the process they sent a demand letter that said hey we think this task force is meeting um illegally it should be open to the public They also got some public records that suggested that some of the board members were conversing kind of outside of public meetings about this decision. And so they said, hey, if you don't stop these task force meetings, we're going to file a suit, potentially, legal action essentially. And so the district said, okay, we're going to pause the task force. We are going to go forward with our own decision. We're going to use... you know input that we've gathered across this process we're gonna have our we have a consultant that we've we've we've looked at we've got these planning studies that we've looked at enrollment studies and we're gonna come to our own decision about this and that is how we arrived at this decision to consolidate schools to bring the preschools into one building um et cetera and then not long after that friends of lakewood schools uh filed a suit and said you know We believe that this decision was arrived at erroneously, largely because of the task force meetings, essentially, a meeting behind closed doors. And we believe that you should go in and look at this again. So there's been a lot of conversation here about Lakewood City Schools enrollment, Connor. Can you tell us about what your reporting has shown when it comes to enrollment at Lakewood City Schools? Yeah. So exactly as Zach mentioned, enrollment has really stabilized. There was a pretty big drop from like 2003 to around now. about 2,400 and 2,500 students or so. It was how much they lost. They had about 6,500 or so in 2003. And during this time period, a lot of public schools have lost enrollments at around that rate or higher. You know, Cleveland schools, for example, they've lost a lot more since during that time period. Generally, it's because schools argue a... just a demographic cliff that's approaching people are having fewer kids um there's also been an opening of school options over the last 20 30 years of there's more private schools there's more charter schools especially in ohio that was really opened up in the 90s lately as well we've seen a pretty big expansion of the school voucher system in ohio and so More and more, there's an enticement for families to potentially choose private schools. Since the voucher was expanded, we haven't seen a huge amount of folks fleeing public schools to go to private schools. That's kind of been a longer-term trend over the years. But really, a lot of folks, a lot of public school advocates and some of the data does back up that it's mostly been a demographic issue. Okay. Well, as we mentioned, the decision is on pause right now. There was a board meeting last night where this idea was discussed. Connor, tell us what happened there. Yeah, so Superintendent Maggie Nidswiki last night shared updated details about how the district has lost enrollment and how its buildings are, how she argues that they're underutilized. And we've got a cut from here here that I think we could play.

As of Friday, our building utilization for all seven buildings would be 61%. We have moved from a school system operating near capacity to one with a significant number of classrooms no longer needed for their original purpose. And that utilization percentage conversation is going to be an important one in the coming weeks and also one that I believe the task force discussed a lot. But just real quick, Ohio law requires that school buildings that aren't used for education purposes. or that are underutilized, be made available to charter schools. But currently, charter school advocates argue schools are kind of skating around that law and they're not really following that. There is a bill in the Ohio Senate that was approved by the Senate. It's being considered by the House now. Ohio Senate Bill 311, which would strengthen that law and would clarify that any school building that's less than 60% full for more than two years should be made available to a charter school. Superintendent Nizuiki did highlight that last night and said, you know, we're not concerned, but this is something that we need to consider moving forward. But Zach, I know you probably want to jump in here. Yeah, I was just going to clarify, I think a couple things. One, the declining enrollment trend, it really tapered off after around 2020. So Lakewood schools consolidated from 10 schools to seven schools around 2015. And that declining enrollment trend was predicted. And that's part of the decision around declining from 10 to 7. Since then, it's held stable and the latest enrollment study shows that it's projected to remain stable for the next 10 years. So a lot of the numbers offered by the district are the whole school, K through 12, but the focus should really be on elementary schools where there is that stability because that's the pipeline of future students. And as far as the capacity numbers that Superintendent Needs Wiki offered last night, those are based on a certain calculation that wasn't what was used by the task force. And the task force numbers quickly pushed back when that type of data was introduced at first because, for example, in a special ed classroom where you could only have eight students, it counts the capacity as 25 students. And in one school, the lowest school of utilization that was shown last night, there's eight classrooms. So that's almost a 30% swing in what the capacity should be. That school, they're rating it at 500. but the real capacity is more like 350. And so that creates big swings and it skews the data to make it seem like there's underutilization where there's not. And as far as the state law that's going, it is a risk and it's good that the district's monitoring. I think that's responsible. The challenge is that the solutions that they've proposed don't address that risk because consolidating kids and then leaving one school with what's likely to be an underutilized preschool.

doesn't seem to fix the problem. So that's really the disconnect. It's not that there's not risks to public education. It's how does this solution solve those problems? If you're just joining us here on the Sound of Ideas, we are talking about Lakewood City schools and the district's plan to repurpose one elementary school, Lincoln Elementary School. That plan is on pause right now due to a legal settlement where the district has agreed to have a couple more meetings and consider this. more before moving forward with the plan. If you want to be a part of this conversation, the number to call is 866-578-0903. You can also send us an email at S-O-I-E-E-Streem.org or send us a message on Instagram at The Sound of Ideas. We have an email now in from Becky Van Oest. That name's probably familiar to you, Zach, because Becky says she's a former member of the elementary school task force. Becky says... She'd like to share this comment. The Lakewood community has given this proposal an overwhelming amount of careful scrutiny and it has surfaced major concerns with core assumptions, costs and benefits, feasibility, and major risks and impacts to safety and quality. These questions can affect the decision and the community needs answers. It needs to hear why alternatives like redistricting and expanding preschool in each elementary building can't address our challenges better. Becky goes on to say, this community needs to see the board faithfully take our important questions into deliberation and put this recommendation to the test. Thank you for writing in, Becky. Zach, I'd like to ask you, I know that the task force was disbanded in 2025. Can you tell us a little bit more about its operations? How many people were involved, how often, how many times you got to meet and what it was like to take part of the task force? Sure. There was about 50 community members that participated. We met, I think, three times during the fall of 2024 and four times during the spring of 2025, so about seven meetings overall. From there, we reduced to a small group that was going to give a presentation to the Board of Education. I was part of that small group who was going to present. Right around that time is when the demand letter was received and the superintendent ultimately disbanded the task force. So there was a draft report that was prepared by the consultants, but it never got to be presented. We never got to make our presentation to the board. Okay. What would the task force have recommended, Zach? I think the task force would have recommended one of the things that there was sort of universal agreement on was the importance of communication, the importance of community, bringing the community together, finding consensus, bringing the community along. That's where there was consensus. I think most people in the task force, I don't want to attribute positions. I think a lot of people in the task force. support of what Becky was saying, which was, how do we find other alternatives? One of the challenges with the task force is there was never really a clear problem statement, and so it's hard to define and evaluate solutions without a clear problem. I think where the task force really provided its value was again in doing that data analysis, giving the district feedback around

What should we do if there is a real emergency in the future? Fortunately there wasn't unlike a lot of other schools in the area There's no fiscal emergency. We just passed a levy There is no operational emergency the schools that are being considered were brand new almost they were built 10 years ago expected to last 50 years So the idea of making a substantial change like this without a clear purpose without a clear solution, without showing what you're improving, how this improves the community. It wasn't a, it shouldn't have been a can we do this? It was supposed to be a should we do this. Is this in the best interest of the community? And I don't think the task force arrived that yes, repurposing a school would have been in the best interest of the community. Thank you for that, Zach. Now, Connor, what has the district said about the lawsuit and the recent announcement they're revisiting the consolidation plan? Yeah, and when they were discussing the settlement, they said that it doesn't constitute an admission that they violated public meetings law, and they said that they're doing this, they reached the settlement voluntarily, and that they want to make sure that they've got, they give more time to hear community concerns. revisit some of the data that they were talking about, and so they could arrive at, you know, a new decision. However, what I did hear from the board meeting last night, it seems like they, and this is just my own interpretation, of course, so take it with a grain of cell, but it just seems like, again, we're moving toward another recommendation to potentially consolidate schools, but it really depends on where they land with that, because it's mostly about the data last night, and it was really like, we are, we have lost. students, we do need to consolidate, we believe, in some regard or to really adjust for these discrepancies and utilization rates for buildings. But then also during the meeting last night, we heard from a lot of folks who were still really concerned about. There was almost like a repeat of last year who were saying, you know, we don't have school buses in Lakewood. If my kid is walking up to 1.5 miles, a mile and a half to school. It's more than 30 minutes walk. I'm worried about safety. I'm worried about, you know, walking, you know, traffic concerns, things of that nature. And also folks are saying, well, I like that I can take my kid to my preschool currently that's close to my home. Really, this is all wrapped up in a broader conversation about Lakewood is this desirable place to live. A lot of the parents argued. Walkability is one of the core components of it that makes our community really strong and vibrant and it's a real concern for this community specifically that it's a smaller community We don't have school buses. This is a long history that we could be upending here in some regard We do have a statement from Lakewood schools. I'll read that for you now During its special meeting on August 4th, the Lakewood City Schools Board of Education voted to approve a settlement related to a legal matter concerning the district's previously approved plan to repurpose Lincoln Elementary School as an early learning center and redraw elementary school attendance boundaries. The settlement provides an opportunity for the board to revisit the proposed repurposing of Lincoln Elementary School and the associated elementary attendance boundary recommendations through additional public discussion before taking further action.

To be very clear here, Connor, this lawsuit settlement doesn't mean, as you just alluded to there, Lakewood can't repurpose Lincoln Elementary School. What does the settlement mean? Yeah, it means that they just have to revisit the decision, provide more a couple of extra meetings to revisit this. And so, and then it looks like, you know, two meetings coming up, and then there will be a special board meeting in early September where the superintendent will resent her final recommendation. And we've already heard from community members who have said, you know, this is not giving us enough time. We feel like we're rushing into a decision again. Okay. We've got a call now from Michael in Lakewood. Michael, welcome to the sound of ideas. Please go ahead. Yeah, this is Michael from Lakewood. I'm wondering if there isn't an area that you are not discussing. I live in Lakewood. I own a condo here. My property tax just increased 86% from $3,700 to over $7,000 per year. That's for a small, modest, 980 square foot condominium. I understand that 60% of my property tax goes to schools. Also in May two months ago, I believe there was another property tax on the ballot. It passed with 66%. The postcards that were sent out to me were not quite truthful. They said this will increase your tax by $14 per month. But unfortunately, you don't pay per month. You pay per year. I think that would be $168. If you read farther in that postcard, it said per $100,000 valuation, I don't know any homes in Lakewood that sell for $100,000. So this is going to increase my property taxes, another $600 to $700 per year, if I'm correct. How do I fight this constant increase in my property taxes? I'm willing to pay a reasonable amount, but with 60% of this money going to schools and I no longer have a child in school, what do you say to that? And second question, how do I appear before this board to ask for maybe one or two buildings to be repurposed, not just one? Thank you for the comment, Michael. So to your second question there, the next board meeting is Monday, August 24th. That's a regular board meeting. And my understanding of that is that the district administration will present on the response to the decline enrollment over the past years and an updated Early Learning Center proposal. That's a public meeting that you can attend, Michael, if you so choose. Zach, I'll ask you about the issues that Michael raised there. Were property tax considerations something that the task force looked at? So I'm not a property tax financial expert. I'm not sure about the idea that 60% of your property taxes go to the school, and I can't speak to the truthfulness of the district's literature on the recent levy increase. I think one challenge here is that there have not been clear financial savings, demonstrated, proven, discussed in this plan. So closing a school doesn't necessarily save any money. proposal from the superintendent still had the same number of classrooms same number of teachers same number of buildings there was no demonstrated savings so closing a school doesn't necessarily help you save any money

It just arguably makes the educational outcomes worse. It makes more challenges for families. So I understand at the surface, it sounds like if you close a school, then you save money. But that hasn't been proven out. And I think that's something that we really need to get clarity on. If there are savings, then we should weigh the balance. What are those savings? And is it worth it for whatever trade-offs are? That's a real conversation that I think we should have. Connor? You can dispute your property evaluation with the County Board of Revision. Also a couple quick things. So about 54% of all property taxes go to Lakewood schools. So the rest is a mix of Lakewood City, the library, Cuyahoga County. And often school districts, when they're advertising about levies, they say. they give you that calculation of like this would be $14 per month for $100,000 of property. So you can do the calculation herself. Like, okay, well, it'd be $28 per month if I have a property value at $200,000. But that's definitely something that we've heard a lot. A lot of people are really sick of their property taxes rising in the state and across the country. It's been a challenge for a lot of folks, especially those unfixed incomes. And then also there's just... There's been this broader conversation right now, right, about, like, we just did a whole series about property taxes, you know. So that's definitely a concern. On the front of, like, do you save a lot of money when a building is closed or repurposed? There's a new study out of California that suggests you might not save a lot of money. You're just saving on utilities and a few things if you close a building. The real savings comes in if you cut staff because you're not going to have those staff to basically operate another building. So a lot of schools across the country right now are consolidating like Cleveland schools. And so, you know, they're arguing they're going to save money, but it usually comes with layoffs or, you know, some other form of, like, there's a lot of empty positions we've got. We're just going to cut all those and never replace them. I also just want to emphasize that... In 2013, Lakewood passed public bonds to rebuild the three elementary schools that are being discussed. So we're still paying off the bonds, whether we close the school or not, that rebuilt Lincoln, Grant, and Roosevelt. So again, I understand the surface-level idea that this could save money, but I think that's not... doesn't necessarily follow. We've got an email in from Jacqueline. Jacqueline writes, if there is underutilization, as has been stated, as well as an overabundance of classrooms, why not put a child care center in the school? There are plenty of children that need aftercare or before care. So wouldn't that be a solution to keep the school open? I mean, it really sounds like a no-brainer win-win situation. That's from Jacqueline. Jacqueline, thank you for sharing that. Zach, is that something that came up in the task force. Yeah, there already are, there already is preschool in a lot of the neighborhood schools. That's one of the unique.

assets of Lakewood because parents can drop off their second grader and their preschooler in the same building. That preschooler gets used to their building. They, you know, they're familiar with the territory. I think there are some challenges with providing aftercare. So from three to five o'clock, there are some logistical challenges around mixing those students. That's a real problem. However, Lakewood already has a all-day preschool at Taft where the administration resides. It's got its own preschool. playground, gross motor. My older son went there. It's a great program. One option that was suggested but never really considered is if we want to keep neighborhood preschool and we need aftercare could we bust those kids to the one place for aftercare where they could consolidate people and they could use those preschool facilities under the plan that superintendent proposed that building which was part of a six million dollar renovation would not even be used as a preschool anymore so one of the things that I think really came out in the task force was How can we use less disruptive solutions to solve the problems? And that goes back to not necessarily having a clear statement of problems to define the solutions. Zach, final question for you on this topic. What has your reaction been to the district revisiting the consolidation plan? And what are you hoping to see moving forward? I have mixed feelings. Last fall was a difficult time. I know redoing this is difficult for a lot of families. My hope is that... So number one, I think the superintendent announced her retirement over the summer. I think before making such a monumental shift, there would be good reason to pause and let a new person come in and see what their vision is rather than saddle somebody with a controversial plan on day one. Like Connor said, I think the board sort of telegraphed where they're going last night in the board meeting. But my hope is that at least we can get a real plan. In October, the board approved an outcome, but not a plan. There were no boundaries. There was no budget. There was no transportation plan or study. No solution on aftercare. So one of the challenges is elementary age aftercare is already in short supply. One of the main reasons for this plan was to expand preschool aftercare. but there's already a shortage of elementary aftercare. So I think my hope for this is that we can have a civil conversation, we can lead to a stronger plan that has real dialogue, and it's not all about just saving a school, it's about getting a real plan in place that people can get behind. On this topic of the Lakewood school consolidation question, as we mentioned, the next board meeting is August 24th. A vote is expected right now, at least planned for Tuesday, September 8th. Connor, while we have you here, I want to ask you a couple questions about another consolidation topic we've talked about here on the Sound of Ideas, Cleveland Metropolitan School District. So remind our audience the change is being made there and the consolidations that have happened. Yeah, a lot. So they're cutting, they're basically going.

They're going to have 29 fewer schools this year. And that also means 18 fewer buildings in the middle of that. Some of them are just combining school programs itself. But the district laid off several hundred staffers in the spring. Some news on that front recently. The district says they've actually offered back all 150 teachers they laid off. They offered them their jobs back. About 50 of them took the jobs. About 50 of them are in kind of a one-year temporary full-time position. And then another 50 took positions elsewhere. There was a significant amount of paraprofessionals as well that were laid off. And they've offered most of them their jobs back. And again, kind of a similar mix of some have taken the jobs. Some haven't, you know. But generally, there's a lot of openings at the beginning of the school year. And so they were able to kind of offer these jobs back. Oh, okay. And there's been some back. and forth on the class size conversation at CMSD? What can you tell us about that? Yeah, so there was a lot of concerns as they lay these teachers off and as they consolidated schools, there might be big class sizes in the schools that remain. And, you know, the contract says 25 to 30 per classroom. They could go higher than that if the teacher is compensated for it. And then the teachers' union's president actually said, I hope we're above that. I hope that we can bring back as many teachers as we can to really push these class sizes lower, you know, really remains to be seen kind of in the first couple weeks of school where we're at with that. Because, yeah, even if students are enrolled, it kind of depends on if they actually show up, basically. So there'll be an adjustment there. Does that happen often? Students not showing up when they're enrolled. Oh, boy. Chronic absenteeism is one of the biggest issues that a lot of schools face nowadays as students. not showing up. There's also families that are really figuring things out, especially in lower income areas. They're really figuring out, like, oh, got a new job, bro, I got a new house, and I don't know where my kids going to go to school because my life is tough right now. And so, you know, really kind of depends where they end up. Okay. Well, we know you'll continue to follow that for us. Connor Morris, our education reporter here at IDEA Stream Public Meanor. Connor, thank you. Of course. And Zach Roebock, former member of the Elementary Planning Task Force at Lakewood City Schools, Zach, thank you for the time. Thanks for having me on. We'll take a quick break now, and when we come back, we will welcome back Mentor, Katie Spots, who is about to embark on a solo row across the Pacific Ocean to promote clean water access. This is the sound of ideas. I'm Stephanie Haney. We'll be right back.

Welcome back to The Sound of Ideas from Ideastream Public Media. I'm Stephanie Haney. Thank you for staying with us. It's about 9.38 right now. How much water have you had to drink so far today? For those of you who are already hydrated, did you buy your water in a bottle? Did you grab it from the tap? Maybe you had it served to you at breakfast? That kind of access to clean water is a luxury that not everyone has outside of the United States, and even in places within the United States. And that disparity is the reason mentor native Katie Spots is preparing to row 10,000 miles solo across the Pacific Ocean, beginning in a few short months. It's a journey that will take around eight months to complete, as Katie aims to become the first woman to row solo from South America to Australia. and the first American woman to row solo across the whole Pacific Ocean, with the goal of bringing clean water to 100,000 people. With us now to talk about this upcoming adventure before she leaves next week for Peru, we have endurance athlete. Katie spots herself. Katie, welcome back to the show. Thank you so much for having me. We appreciate it. If you want to be a part of this conversation, you can call us at 866578-0903. You can also email us at SOI at ideastream.org or message us on Instagram at the Sound of Ideas. Now, Katie, we are catching you about a week before you head to Peru, which is a bit earlier than you had planned to do that. Your December launch date is what is in in mind here, maybe January, 2027, depending on the weather. Tell us what happened to push up your departure to Peru. So in early July, they passed a new law, and it requires me to be there when my boat arrives. So I wanted to get my boat there sooner to make sure that customs wasn't clearing, it could clear customs in time, just because getting the right weather window is so important. So it's a bit of a curveball, but. I was basically squeezing in four months of planning in the last three weeks. But we're good. I think it's going to all work out. And it, I mean, there's always pluses when the plans change. So now it just gives me more time to be with the boat and, yeah, test all my gear before I set sail. And a lot of gear for a six to eight month expedition across the Pacific Ocean. So. I'm wondering, how will this impact your training? Can you tell us a bit about how your training has looked here in North East Ohio and if you have any idea how that will look in Peru? So I've been very fortunate to be able to train at both the Foundry and Tremont Athletic Club. So a lot of my focus has been on building strength because it's very likely that I will lose a lot of muscle mass during the course of that journey just because I'm burning so many calories and doing so much physical activity.

I am going to be staying. There's a, it's called Club Day Rigadas. It's a very, um, well-known rowing club and facility. And so I, there's a branch right within a mile of where I'll be launching. So I'll, I'll be able to train on the machine there and do my strength training. And then the yacht club where my boat will be, where I'll be launching from is right there too. So I can get on the water. So I really do feel like, uh, it will, it definitely, will work out for my training and i could still continue to train as as as usual okay now this is not your first major feat in support of helping people get access to clean water so first tell us why is this cause so important to you Well, if you care about anything, you could probably find a reason to care about clean water. If you care about environment, if you care about health, if you care about youth, if you care about education, if you care about women empowerment, if you care about business, it really touches all aspects of life and is the first step out of poverty. I wasn't aware of water issues until I was living in Australia. So I went to college and did a semester, and they had a drought for, it was going on for a decade, and it was affecting everything from when you could water your grass and if you could wash your car. And there was just this perpetual fear of the water, the water running out. And at the same time, I was studying environmental science, and I vividly remember one of my professors saying that the wars of the future will be because of water, and in some countries, it's already the case. And that just was... That it just stopped me in my tracks. I was, you know, 19 thinking I had a sense of what was going on in the world. And here I am blind to a billion people who have this problem. And... The thing about clean water is there's a lot of problems we don't have the solution to. There's, you know, we have to spend money on research, and there's, but clean water's not that. We do genuinely have the solution for this massive problem. So to me, it was, it was so hard not to want to do something. And what's really exciting about this upcoming campaign is that.

$10 can give one person clean water for a decade. And in Fiji, most people probably don't think of water issues happening in Fiji. But Fiji is 300 islands. The main island has great water, but 300 islands, 100 of them are inhabited. And then you have to, some of these places are harder to get to than places in sub-Saharan Africa because... you have to take a boat and that's expensive. And then you also have to time it because there's cyclone season. So it's very hard to reach these communities and there's only certain times of the years that you can. So with this upcoming campaign, if we reach our fundraising target, it will mean that we will reach a point that there is universal access to clean water in Fiji. And that's something that's only been accomplished in two other countries. Wow. with a problem as big as the global water crisis, to have a win like that to say, and now the work is done, is just, I think it's an example to show that it is achievable and that it could happen in other countries if it could happen there. And I think the number that I've seen on your campaign is 100,000 people, that it will impact directly in Fiji to get to that universal access in that space. Yes, and I was fortunate enough to spend some time this past April. with the charity partner. They're called Give Clean Water, but they've been working there. And I've never seen this kind of collaboration, but they do have buy-in and partnership with the Ministry of Health. So it's very exciting to start projects. It's not as fun and exciting to maintain them. And so it's so great to see that this isn't just the start, but this is sustaining it for years to come because there are. designated health workers for each island. And so they take that role of monitoring, educating, and it's very cool with the Sawyer filters that there's a QR code and they can upload. show over time what impact it's really making. So it's not just this feel-good idea. There's actually numbers and data to show it is truly making a difference. If you're just joining us here on The Sound of Ideas, we are talking about endurance athlete Katie Spots, who is a men are native and her plan to embark on a Pacific Ocean rowing journey completely alone across the Pacific Ocean, 10,000 miles. That's coming up for her in December or January. Her goal is to... encourage clean water access and make that a reality for people in Fiji with this particular campaign. If you want to be a part of this conversation, the number to call is 866-578-0903. You can also email us at SOI at Ideastream.org or send us a message on Instagram at the Sound of Ideas. We do have a note in from David B in Cleveland Heights. David says, it's always great to hear from Katie Spots. One word that describes her is inspirational, both her physical ability and her commitment and message to issues of water access. I wish you a Pacific voyage, Katie, David says, from Cleveland Heights. Thank you, David. A little note for you there. Now.

I mentioned this is not your first feat in support of helping people gain access to clean water. You became the youngest person ever to row an ocean solo in 2010. That was across the Atlantic Ocean. What gave you that idea? This is such a big idea. And the specific ocean journey is an even bigger idea as your vehicle to spread your message about clean water access. The idea found me. I was on a bus. I was chatting to someone sitting next to me. We got on the topic of endurance challenges, and that was when I was in Australia. And I thought I heard it all. I thought I knew people, you know, sailed around the world and climbed the tallest mountains. But when someone mentioned their friend had rode across the Atlantic. I just, I couldn't believe it. I never heard of anyone doing that. And it just captured my imagination like nothing else did. And so it wasn't this, I mean, at that point, I didn't even know how to row. So I did have a few years of, ultra cycling and ultra running. So it gave me some confidence in understanding what happens mentally when your body wants to stop, but your brain lets you keep going. So I understood that process enough to say, okay, maybe this applies for rowing too. But I, you know, I was just so curious. It turned into looking online, reading about other people who have done it, figuring out what boats were used. How do they eat? How do they drink? How do they sleep? How is this even humanly possible? And so that curiosity just grew. And I had to make the decision that I was either going to row the Atlantic or I was going to spend the rest of my life wondering. you know, what if. And so I knew that the choice was do it or regret not doing it. And to me, a life of regret, I mean, anything you do can become habit. And if you ignore your call and push it away, then the call won't happen anymore. And it can be easy to stuff those things down and just... Yeah, and I just couldn't do that. I had to give it a try. And I mean, I took it very seriously, and I spent two or three years preparing. And there's no ocean rowing for dummies books out there. It's, yeah, because I do have the experience of rowing the Atlantic, it does give me more confidence going into the Pacific. Having said that, this is three times longer. My boat. is a lot better than what it was uh there's something called auto helm so even when i'm sleeping if there's drift it will help guide it won't propel but but that is one of the biggest changes in the past you know decade or so is that technology is so much better now the boats are lighter and um

Yeah, you're just seeing people smash all these speed records. And I do believe that I have the best boat in the world for this job. And so I haven't been able to train on Lake Erie much because my boat was built in the Netherlands and being shipped to Peru. So it's a very international project just from the start with the boat being out of country. So you mentioned the boat being lighter like that's a good thing. That would make me very nervous. Obviously, I don't know anything about rowing any kind of ocean. I don't know anything about rowing like Erie. But I want to ask you a little bit about that. Is it safe to sleep on this boat? What does that mean for you? So I have AIS, which is the ability to, and a radar. So. While I'm sleeping, I will get alerts. I will wake up and be able to see if there's any boats. And I could set that to two miles out. Then you get on your VHF radio and you call over, make sure that they see you. And that's how you deal with that. Having said that, there will be even less on the Pacific. than there was on the Atlantic. The first 3,000 miles, there's no islands, and it's not really a popular area to be. So I am lucky if I see an airplane or... another boat. I might only see another boat the last 500 miles reaching into Australia. So, yeah, it, it's, uh, there's not a lot going on out there in the Pacific. So yeah, I don't, I don't have to worry as much about those things. Um, yeah, I think for this challenge, my biggest concern is just my mind. I mean, There's a big difference between spending three months alone and six to eight months alone. And so I did work with a sports psychologist. I do have, you know, contingencies if this happens, then what, regarding my mental health? And it is a huge unknown. But let's talk about that isolation piece. So as you mentioned, just to go over these numbers again, 10,000 miles, six to eight months, totally unassisted, isolated. Will you have any contact with people back home and all? Can you make phone calls? Why does that look like? So the good news is that I do have Starlink, and that's something within the last two years that's become more accessible, and I could sometimes get better connections sometimes than here on land. So Starlink will give me the ability to... post daily videos so i will be active on social media on instagram facebook um tic talk and i have a tracker so that's going to update probably like every 10 minutes so you could see on a map and there's even ways to upload photos videos and uh voice recordings on that map so i do think that that will help me stay connected and um

now more than ever it's we have that sure will that be a one way conversation when you just be kind of posting things for people or will be people be able to send you messages of encouragement if they want to so i do have someone helping with social media to up load all those, so I'll send it to her. And so she'll be able to give me some of those messages back. Okay. Yeah. What about entertainment? I mean, I can't imagine you'll be taking much time off rowing to, you know, read a book, but will you be listening to books on tape? Are you taking any DVDs, anything like that? Yeah. So I definitely have a lot of great music that. And I think the great thing about endurance is when you get in a flow state, And you, you know, time melts away and you're just so invested and so tuned into the moment that nothing, the whole world melts away and you're just completely 100% in that. And so that is the most entertaining and the best place for me to be on this. I do have, I brought my Nintendo Switch just on the days that. I have, so there will be some days I'm blown in the wrong direction. So I'll have a pair of anchor. You don't anchor to the seafloor, but it's a parachute that will minimize the drift. So there are times that I might just be stuck in the cabin waiting for the winds to change. I have that. My mom, she wrote 200 plus letters, so I have one of those to read every day. But I will say that. I am very much, you know, I love endurance. So this to me, I know to a lot of people would seem like a nightmare, but I do enjoy the process. I do love the way my body feels while doing these challenges. Okay. You mentioned some of the questions that people have for you. I just want to go over a couple more details here, and then I'll ask you the question that everybody asks you. You're going to be burning a million calories on this journey. So you'll have all of your food with you when you leave, mix of dehydrated things as well. Eating food means there will be waste. So tell us about the bucket, Katie. Okay, so yes, there's no bathroom. So it is a bucket and chuck it type situation. I understand how, okay, I'm doing this for clean water and that's happening. But the amount is so small. it naturally, you know, cleans itself through the ocean. So that's as good as it gets on an ocean row boat. So presumably you will get out of the boat at times. I mean, you've got to do it to dump the bucket, I guess. So I won't need to get in for that, but there are barnacles that will grow on the bottom of my boat. Like you can have anti-fowling paint, but. it's still going to have some growth. And so my job will be to make sure those barnacles are scrubbed off the side of it just to minimize, yeah, like just to get that drag off your boat. So on the Atlantic, I was very hot. So sometimes it was just really nice to dip in the water to...

cool off and I'll have a little snorkel kit. And so I enjoyed the times I did spend in the water. You do have to be pretty diligent about getting the salt off of your body because it's so easy to get salt sores. And any wound, any injury, it's not really going to heal until you're back on land completely. So it's so important to be proactive about injury prevention. with little things like that, like making sure you're hygienic as possible too. And you are doing this in support of clean water. Your fundraising goal is to ideally support 100,000 people gaining access to clean water that will take a million dollars in Fiji. How are you going to have water on this trip? So I have two solar panels, well, I have solar panels on each cabin, and then I actually have some on the deck. And so that powers all of my electronics, but it also powers my desalinator. That's probably the most energy intensive thing on my boat. So it converts the salt water into drinking water, and I run that. I mean, I could run it daily, but I would only need to do it once every five days to have enough for my journey. But yeah, everything is on this 24-foot boat. So a lot of my food is very, you know, it's like the dehydrated meals where you just add water, very dense, like olive oil, going to be putting a lot of that. So I will be, yeah, consuming around 4,000 or 5,000 calories and adding water back into a lot of those meals to keep the weight down. Okay. Katie, tell us where people can go to track your journey. So my website is katyspots.com. And then on Instagram, it's Katie Spots, Facebook, hello, Katie Spots. Okay. And that is with a Z. Spots with a Z. Thank you for the time, Katie Spots, Endurance Athlete preparing to row the Pacific Ocean solo. We appreciate the time. Thank you so much. If you missed any part of today's show, you can hear a rebroadcast tonight at 9 on 897 WKSU, and every episode of The Sound of Ideas is available wherever you get your podcasts and on YouTube. You can get the last word on today's topics by emailing SOI at IdeaStream.org and finding us on Instagram at The Sound of Ideas. Last Thursday, we highlighted Cleveland magazine's new travel articles. These are highlighting spaces outside the city of Cleveland. We talked with Annie Nikoloff of Cleveland Magazine, and we got this message from Catherine. Catherine says, I hope that Annie can spotlight Worcester. We have amazing things to do, eat and see here. City Square Steakhouse, the retriever, the Marquette. Catherine's list goes on. Catherine is making the case for Worcester, Annie, if you are listening. Thank you for those recommendations, Catherine. Tomorrow on The Sound of Ideas, we'll talk about the Red Cross declaring a blood shortage crisis. We'll also fill you in on the latest in the fight against HIV and AIDS. I'm Stephanie Haney. Thank you for keeping the conversation going. We'll see you back here tomorrow on The Sound of Ideas.